Page:Christian Greece and Living Greek.djvu/76

 54 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. answer to your letter should have been so long deferred, I remain, Very truly yours. I wish to add to this letter a few remarks which do not exactly concern the Greek pronun- ciation, but the calumniation of the living Greek, which is the manifestation of a con- vSpiracy of ignorance and malevolence against Greece. Just such men who have travelled a little in Greece write in a vein peculiar to many tourists in general; they delight in exaggera- tions of exceptional and accidental incidents, and generalize from them. Thus, an English- man writes that he finds in the modern Greek stereotyped phrases most distasteful to the scholar. Sure enough he could have found such phrases at home and everywhere. Every- where scholarly speaking and writing is the exception, the commonplace is the rule. That wise Mirza truthfully has said : " I will praise God that not all men are wise, because if they were, wisdom would be too cheap." German residents of Athens have sent a peti- tion to Emperor William of Germany request- ing to have the living Greek pronunciation adopted in the German schools. The petitioners